Working with Kwok Leung: Reflections from Four Grateful Collaborators

Abstract

This article is a set of tributes about Kwok Leung, a colleague of the four colleagues who collaborated with Kwok over more than three decades and provide their reflections on working professionally with him. The four content areas of their academic contributions were justice, social axioms, and methodology in cross-cultural research and creativity. The focus of each tribute is upon Kwok Leung's collaborative style and particular genius.You have been told that, if we today see further than our predecessors, it is only because we stand on their shoulders. But this is an occasion on which I should prefer to remember, not the giants upon whose shoulders we stood, but the friends with whom we stood arm in arm. . .colleagues in so much of my work.Peter B. Medawar, from his Nobel Prize Banquet speech (December 10, 1960) This quote, from one of the great writers on science and how good science gets done, seems apt for this tribute to the work of Kwok Leung, whose stellar career in the social psychology of justice, cross-cultural methodology, interpersonal harmony, and worldviews was cut short by his death this past year at age 57. For, Kwok was a collaborator whose contributions to the content and the process of creating new and useful knowledge blessed his co-creators; he was humble, smart, fast, reliable, imaginative, funny, careful, respectful, well-grounded in the relevant literature, and appreciative of his co-creators. He was the complete package as both friend and colleague.Kwok raised the game of anyone who worked with him. In this retrospective article, four of his most frequent collaborators briefly describe their memories of working in their various ways with Kwok, assessing how they developed interpersonally and what they learned about doing social science in his company, in person across oceans and continents. Kwok would only regard this exercise as worth our time and effort in writing out our recollections if reading these offerings would help readers improve their collaborative process and outcomes in what for him was the great and vital mystery of human social behavior. That mystery gets closer to resolution if one masters the process of doing research. As Medawar

Celebrating the Work of Jeanne M. Brett: Building Bridges and Making Connections

“…We presented this work, which later appeared in Negotiation Journal (Adair et al, 2004;Brett, Adair, Lempereur, Okumura, Shikhirev, Tinsley, & Lytle, 1998), as an international panel of scholars at the 1998 IACM conference. This was during the era of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Dennis Rodman's Chicago Bulls, and I will always remember the pride I felt when our discussant Kwok Leung (for a recent tribute to his work, see Bond, van de Vijver, Morris, & Gelfand, 2016) referred to us as the cross-cultural negotiation "dream team." Jeanne has promoted the cross-fertilization of negotiation theory with cross-cultural psychology, communication, and decision theories.…”

The Role of Experts and Scholars in Community Conflict Resolution: A Comparative Analysis of Two Cases in China

“…Furthermore, many previous studies (Avruch, ; Bond, van de Vijver, Morris, & Gelfand, ; Cohen, ; Faure & Rubin, ; Jia, ; Tinsley & Brett, ) have highlighted the impact of culture on conflict resolution. Ostrom () also argued, “I presume that a meeting of East and West is possible.…”

A Giant of Cultural Research: Seeing Further from the Shoulders of Kwok Leung

“…But more than anything else Kwok was a dedicated and tireless scientist, a true believer that the most complex and important questions about culture and behavior be elucidated by careful conceptual and empirical inquiry. While other tributes to Kwok have focused on his remarkable talents as a collaborator (Bond, van de Vijver, Morris, & Gelfand, 2016), this special issue focuses on his scientific contributions.…”